Maká is a Matacoan language spoken in

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

and

Paraguay Paraguay, officially the Republic of Paraguay, is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the Argentina–Paraguay border, south and southwest, Brazil to the Brazil–Paraguay border, east and northeast, and Boli ...

by the Maká people. Its 1,500 speakers live primarily in Presidente Hayes Department near the Río Negro, as well as in and around

Asunción Asunción (, ) is the capital and the largest city of Paraguay. The city stands on the eastern bank of the Paraguay River, almost at the confluence of this river with the Pilcomayo River. The Paraguay River and the Bay of Asunción in the north ...

Phonology

Velar consonants alternate with palatal consonants before and sometimes before . Examples include ~ and ~ . The palatal approximant is realised as a palatal fricative before , as in ~ . Syllables in Maká may be of types V, VC, CV, CCV, and CCVC. When a consonant cluster appears at the beginning of a syllable, the second consonant must be , , , or .

Morphology

Nouns

Gender

Maká has two genders—masculine and feminine. The demonstratives reflect the gender of a noun. In the plural the gender distinction is neutralized, and the plural demonstrative is the same as the feminine singular:

Number

Maká nouns inflect for plurality. There are several distinct plural endings: , , , and . All plants take the plural, but otherwise the choice seems to be unpredictable.

Case

Maká does not have any overt case marking on nouns. Consider the following sentence, where neither the subject nor object shows any case.

Agreement with the possessor

Nouns agree with their possessor in person.

Verbs

Agreement with subject and object

Verbs agree with their subject and object in a rather complex system. Gerzenstein (1995) identifies five conjugation classes for intransitive verbs. The following two examples show intransitive verbs from conjugation classes 1 and 3. Transitive verbs belong to a different conjugation class, Conjugation 6. The following forms show a transitive verb with a 3rd person object: If the object of the transitive verb is 1st or 2nd person, then certain combinations of subject and object are shown by a portmanteau morpheme. Other combinations involve an object agreement marker which may either precede or follow the subject marker.

Applicatives

Verbs in Maká have a series of suffixes called 'postpositions' in Gerzenstein (1995), which have the effect of introducing new oblique objects into the sentence. The following examples show the applicative suffixes and

Syntax

Noun phrases

In noun phrases, the possessor precedes the possessed noun. Noun phrases show the order (Demonstrative) (Numeral) (Adjective) N.

Sentences

Affirmative

The basic word order for a transitive clause in Maká is subject–verb–object, as seen in the following example. For intransitive clauses, the basic order is verb-subject.

Interrogative

In yes–no questions, the usual subject–verb–object order changes to verb-subject-object following an initial particle . Sentences with wh-questions show a sentence-initial question word. Maká has a very small inventory of question words, with only three members: , , and . The following example shows an interrogative sentence with an initial question word.

Notes

References

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External links

Argentinian Languages Collection of Ana Gerzenstein
containing audio recordings of Maká, from the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America.
Maca
( Intercontinental Dictionary Series) {{DEFAULTSORT:Maka Language Languages of Paraguay Matacoan languages Chaco linguistic area